As companies start to grow & bring on more and more customers – your service team will inevitably start fielding more requests through multiple service channels. Service channels are ways that customers can contact your company. Service channels include, for example, phone, email, web forms, web chat, text messaging, and social media posts to your company. Multichannel support means offering your customers multiple ways to get in touch, so they can connect when and how they want. To help your service teams handle these requests through these multiple channels, Salesforce created the Omni-channel feature for support teams.
So what is Omni-Channel?
Omni-Channel is a Customer Service and Console based Salesforce feature that helps automatic routing of different kinds of work items (such as Leads and Cases) to agents. Omni Channel routes all the work items to the agents automatically based on the agent’s capacity, priority, skillset, and etc. No custom development is required, but everything is handled through configuration. The end result is now agents can assist their customers more efficiently, leading to improved operational efficiency. Without Omni-Channel, agents often rely on list views to find new cases to work. From the list view, the agent selects a case, reassigns ownership, and then gets going. This leaves much room for improvement as lower priority cases may be grabbed before those with higher priority, and agents can cherry pick their work.
Here is a look at the different routing features:
· Queue-Based Routing
In queue-based routing, you organize your agents into different queues, which generally represent a single skill. A queue can support a particular product or a particular part of the business. For example, you can have a Billing Queue and a Technical Support Queue.
In queue-based routing, Omni-Channel assigns work to a queue. Agents are members of a queue, and Omni-Channel assigns work to agents based on the priority of the queue.
Smaller companies that operate in limited geographies and have fewer product offerings and agents often prefer queue-based routing because it’s simpler to set up.
· Skills-Based Routing
If you have agents with different skill sets and abilities and your customers have different needs, skills-based routing can be the best option. In skills-based routing, the contact center routes work to the best agent for the job.
Say a customer case requires an agent who speaks Spanish and is knowledgeable about your company’s billing and returns processes. With skills-based routing, Omni-Channel can assign skills that you create, such as Spanish and Billing, as required skills on the case, and then match the case to an agent with those skills.
Companies that are expanding into different geographies and larger companies with multiple product offerings and services usually prefer skills-based routing because it makes it easier to route work items to agents based on a more sophisticated set of criteria.
· External Routing
Perhaps you already have a routing implementation that you like, and you’re adding Salesforce to the mix. You can integrate third-party routing using a partner application with Omni-Channel.
Developers can use Salesforce’s standard APIs (application programming interfaces) and streaming APIs to write code that lets third-party routing systems work with Salesforce. External routing lets your company route work to the Service Console, so that you can keep the routing system that you prefer.
